Autumn Sketch Fest XXVII

CECAF Sketches 3

Another one from Saturday – this is an old favourite, Knuckles the Malevolent Nun, pounding away on the skins (and available for purchase here). (Update: Sold.)

Face It, Tiger...

Fred the Clown: Making Hail While the Nun Shines

This one was originally a companion piece to a strip that passed muster for the collection, Returning a Deaf Ear. I think throwing Knuckles the Malevolent Nun in there was a tad self-indulgent...

Entertaining Mr Stone

Twenty-five years ago, Cornelius Stone and I created a character called Knuckles the Malevolent Nun. Yesterday, I visited Cornelius for the first time in a few years. I always feel like I left Knuckles with Cornelius when I moved to England...

G'day, Mate!

Okay, so this week I made a decision - Mugwhump the Great will take another short hiatus once the current chapter is finished, which will be in about a month. I've got a trip to New Zealand coming up - I'll be there for most of April - and trying to get ahead enough before I left was proving too much for even my considerable powers. Best to worry about it after I get back from the Old Country. I'm determined that there will be content updating at the Hotel Fred of some kind or another during its absence - so stay tuned as I work out what that actually is.

Anyway. Having made that decision, I've had to get cracking on some scripts that are due. I'm currently scripting, tag-style, Muppet Show #8 (which I'll be back to drawing full-time after Amy Mebberson's wonderful run concludes) and, er, something else. Sorry to be a tease, but I saw the cover for the first issue yesterday and I just about wet myself. It should be something wonderful.

Bastards!

I've been noticing this thing turning into a sketch blog lately. This may be a welcome development. Here's one I did for someone which they then kindly posted on the internet so I could steal it back.


I've recently discovered the work of a guy called Chris Samnee, who I understand is big shakes in the world of superhero comics. He's bloody great! Like the bastard child of Alex Toth. And what drew my attention to this fine fellow, I hear you ask?

Ah, now. Well. Patience, grasshopper. Patience.

Squarwick

My colleague, friend and fellow Kiwi expatriate Scott Gray was involved in a car accident yesterday and was quite badly hurt, so I'm not feeling too clever this morning. I believe he's going home today after a night in hospital, with some broken bones and "a black eye the size of a rugby ball". I'm relieved it wasn't worse -- as, I'm sure, is he. Merry Christmas, eh? Anyway, this one's for him.

The Nun Has Landed

I'm very pleased to report that the new Knuckles the Malevolent Nun comic, She Might Get Rather Crude, is now available through the Hotel Fred. As an added enticement, I'm giving away a free sketch to anybody who orders one directly from me (selected from my groaning pile of convention sketches which are otherwise going to clutter the place up indefinitely).

The banner above doesn't click through to anything, by the way - I couldn't work out how to do that. Mister Technology, me.

Still doing the Fin Fang Foom story I mentioned last time. One more page of pencils to go. My next thing in print is likely to be the Doctor Who story, which should be in the December issue of DWM (#390). James Offredi has coloured it beautifully. Here's a taste:

I bring you news from Earth

That Comics Journal interview is out now! Four years in the making, if you count from the date where they first asked me if I'd be interested. Those nuts! Chock full of Langridge waffle from both myself and my brother Andrew, plus 20-odd pages of comic content by me, as well as whatever else they threw in from the small rainforest's worth of paper I mailed them. That's this year's book sorted, I reckon.

Also worth announcing is the Indie Spinner Rack anthology, Awesome, which (despite the cheesy title) promises to be quite an amazing collection, featuring new work by myself, Al Columbia, Renée French, Nick Bertozzi, Bernie Mireault, Andy Runton and many, many others. I'm slightly awed and humbled to be in such illustrious company. It's going to be out for SPX, and can be ordered from the latest issue of Previews.



Last but not least, I'm currently putting the new Knuckles one-shot, She Might Get Rather Crude, together. It'll be out for SPX in October if all goes well. This one is written by Cornelius Stone and features stories by me, Dylan Horrocks, Ant Sang, Chris Slane and others, as well as pin-ups by Bob Fingerman and Mike Mignola.

That should keep you busy for another couple of months...

Because It's There

That's a Raptus

The very lovely people behind the Raptus Festival in Norway have kindly invited me to attend as a guest later this year - this illustration is one I've just finished for them, for publicity purposes. The theme is "the cartoon characters are taking over the city!" and the weird edifice they're surrounding is Bergen's Fantoft Stave Church, a reconstruction of the original thousand-year-old building which was destroyed in a fire in 1992.

Can You Play a Pianny?

Here's another page from the Knuckles-waiting-to-be-published pile. Cornelius' views on whether the Goon Show was anti-Semitic or not differ from my own; I always thought the dodgy "Yid" gags were mitigated somewhat by Peter Sellers being Jewish. (And the fact that they all spent quite a bit of time fighting Hitler when they were younger.) But I think it made a pretty good strip.


Four more pages to go on the new Art d'Ecco story! Then I've just got to wallop the book into some sort of coherent order and do a few splash pages...

Caution: May Contain Comedy Swearing

Aargh, dropping the ball here again. All right, here's an as-yet unpublished Knuckles cartoon. Supposed to go into a new Knuckles comic (which I'll only be contributing to occasionally, although Cornelius Stone will still be the main writer). I think it'll come out when they've got three issues in the can, whenever that is. Corn, bless 'im, has made the concession for the American market of inventing the word "gunt" to replace the more obvious choice. By George, I think we've cracked it! Fame and fortune can only be a comic book away.

Customs and Habits

Here's a Knuckles strip I did a few years back, for a benefit comic to raise legal fees for Knockabout Comics vs. H.M. Customs, when Customs seized a huge number of their Crumb books and tried to prosecute them. (Knockabout eventually won but they didn't get their books back in time to capitalise on the Crumb movie -- which is why they imported them in the first place, I seem to recall.)

The strip didn't go in the Knuckles collection a few years back because it needed too much context to make any sense. Probably still a bit thin on context even here, but it's only the internet, innit.





Today: doing rough breakdowns for a new Art d'Ecco story to go in the collection. I laughed out loud when I read Andrew's script. Good sign.